Tokenized Equities, Kamino RWAs and zachXBT Investigation

Tokenized-equity TVL rose from virtually zero in mid-2025 to about $250 million, with Solana accounting for roughly a quarter of the cross-chain total and ranking second to Ethereum. Tom said the strongest potential lies in composability and access for people who cannot use traditional brokerage channels; the immediate advantage is less obvious for investors who already have that access.

Superstate’s “canonical shares” are actual company shares represented by tokens, with Superstate acting as transfer agent. The product can pass dividends, but its voting-rights mechanism was unclear. Because users must be KYC’d and whitelisted, secondary-market activity has remained minimal. X Stocks, by contrast, are Swiss tracker certificates and technically debt instruments: holders are creditors of the issuer, not shareholders with traditional voting or dividend rights. They can track underlying assets through Swiss regulation and primary-market arbitrage, but are not identical to those assets; a $100,000 trade in the four or five most liquid xStocks could incur nearly 1% in immediate execution loss, before transaction costs and slippage.

Tokenized commodity and equity volume reached a record the prior week, with gold making up around 30% and Tether-issued gold contributing most of the increase. Much of the recent tokenized-equity volume came from pre-stocks linked to companies including OpenAI and Anthropic. Speakers characterized these as speculative exposure to private companies and questioned how accurately their prices reflect the underlying businesses.

Kamino v2’s modular architecture allows permissionless markets with distinct risk parameters. Carlos said eight RWA markets had appeared since May 2025, growing from virtually zero to just over $1 billion in deposits and representing 35% of Kamino’s total market. Figure Prime, onboarded in December, was the largest, with nearly $600 million in deposits. It offers yield from private credit backed by tokenized HELOCs and can be looped against USDC; Carlos cited about 8% APY on Figure Prime and about 4% borrowing costs for USDC. He attributed the market’s growth to demand for crypto-uncorrelated yield, rather than external incentives.

Stablecoin borrowing on Kamino grew to more than $400 million. USDC utilization in Prime was described as basically 100%, while utilization for USDC Cash and PYUSD was above 90%. Speakers connected sustained RWA demand to looping for yield from private credit, mortgage origination, and reinsurance, particularly as demand for crypto-market leverage weakens and basis-trade yields erode. Kamino’s xStocks and Superstate markets, however, have so far attracted little borrowing, with activity mostly on the supply side.

Speakers said 24/7 trading can create weekend price gaps that leave positions liquidated by Monday, and expected broader around-the-clock trading by traditional providers to improve market-making and borrowing. They also said current liquidation LTVs are too low to exceed the 50% cap they cited for U.S. securities-based lending. Borrowing against one tokenized stock may also be less convenient than borrowing against a diversified brokerage account; basket or vault approaches were raised as possibilities, not established solutions. Kamino Multiply was described as a one-click tool for leveraged-yield looping, while its less-used spot-leverage product offers an alternative to perps for directional positions that may be cheaper for longer-term trades.

ZachXBT’s investigation found that an Axiom business-development employee had been using information about user accounts. The alleged conduct involved using links between users’ connected addresses to trade ahead of better-known or tagged wallets, without users’ knowledge or approval. One speaker questioned whether “insider trading” was the right label, describing it instead as trading on customer information. Axiom said it was cutting ties with the individual and investigating. A speaker considered an isolated “bad apple” possible but said it was too soon to know whether users would leave; figures they checked showed no major change in balances or trading volume at that time. The discussion also recalled an earlier controversy over alleged priority-fee overcharges and noted that users may tolerate costs or controversies when a trading product is convenient. It contrasted 2–3% slippage or fees that may matter less to meme-coin traders pursuing large upside with repeated 1–2% costs that compound for users with small balances; large traders and institutions, speakers said, are unlikely to accept 1% or 5% spreads on major equity trades.